Letter: Revamp and privatize VA hospitals

On June 17, I mailed two and one half pages of reasons to our Louisiana congressional delegation and out-of-state congressmen giving reasons why the Veterans Administration should be reconstructed. I would like to share a few of my suggestions and questions to Congress:

B. Why can’t Congress appoint a VA director with a background in medicine, proven in leadership with a military background?

C. Why can’t Congress instruct the new director to divide the United States into four sections — north, south, east and west and appoint a professional medical/administrator type to each of these sections and classified as assistant director? This would result in one main office in Washington and four other districts representing the rest of the USA with the initial responsibility of drafting guidelines for only one way in medical and administrative treatment of veterans.

D. Rebuilding the VA and setting completely new guidelines would not happen overnight — it took years for it to fail — but the end result would be for every veteran and qualified dependent be issued a VA medical card to be used in any qualified medical facility in the veteran’s resident state and community.

E. By now Congress, the tax payers and all veterans should be getting the drift of this suggestion. Properly planned, we could justify privatizing veterans’ medical care!

My letter to Congress emphasized that the Veterans Administration was entirely too large, too controlled by “lifers” — a saying we have in the military as “one who serves and remains in one place entirely too long.”

In addition, my new proposed plan would eliminate high-salaried civilian positions and replace them with qualified prior service members, and completely eliminate bonus pay and discourage organized unions. Another major point I stressed is that all veterans service officers in every state would be classified as a federal employee and housed in a building provided by one of the four VA districts.

Needless to say, any and all existing veterans hospitals, nursing homes and employees would be the responsibility of the assistant director of VA in the respective districts.